In terms of valuations, Deng believes that the recent weakness in Chinese equities represents an attractive opportunity for investors to participate in a multi-year growth story at a low entry level.

“With share price valuations at the lower end of historical ranges in both Hong Kong and China A-Share markets, we maintain that the economic prospects for China are substantially stronger than currently priced into the market and we will continue to view periods of market weakness as potential buying opportunities.

“We believe that inflation and policy risk has started to moderate in China, while the government’s pro-growth policies should make smaller and medium-sized companies, particularly the latter, deserving of renewed interest going into 2012.”

Recently, the People’s Bank of China cut the bank reserve requirement ratio by 50 basis points, the first reduction since December 2008. Deng believes this move has the potential to encourage banks to lend additional money and should provide strong support to economic growth.

– TER of just 0.60%, considerably less
than actively-managed China funds

“In our view, this is also evidence that the Chinese Central Bank feels sufficiently comfortable with the outlook for inflation that it can begin to loosen China’s tight monetary policy.”

As inflationary pressures gradually ease, and as confidence returns to equity markets, Deng believes that earnings growth will once again become the principal driver of Chinese equities.

“We maintain our core view that while we acknowledge that there are risks, we believe the market is being too pessimistic. China is a dynamic economy with enormous potential for transformation, with the International Monetary Fund forecasting economic growth to come in at 9.0% in 2012, more than double the predicted global growth rate of 4.0%.”

The FTSE RAFI Hong Kong China Index is designed to track the performance of the largest Hong Kong companies on the FTSE RAFI Hong Kong China Index based on the following four fundamental measures of firm size: book value, income, sales and dividends.

CS ETF (IE) on CSI 300

DB X-tracker CSI 300 Index ETF

The CSI 300 Index measures the performance of 300 stocks traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges.